THE 1992 CAMPAIGN

THE 1992 CAMPAIGN; Transcript of 2d TV Debate Between Bush, Clinton and Perot

Published: October 16, 1992

Following is a transcript of the Presidential debate in Richmond last night between President Bush, Gov. Bill Clinton and Ross Perot, as transcribed by The New York Times: Fair Trade

Q: Tonight's program is unlike any other Presidential debate in history -- we're making history now and it's pretty exciting. An independent polling firm has selected an audience of 209 uncommitted voters from this area. The candidates will be asked questions by these voters on a topic of their choosing -- anything they want to ask about. My job as moderator is to, you know, take care of the questioning, ask questions myself if I think there needs to be continuity and balance, and sometimes I might ask the candidates to respond to what another candidate may have said.

Now the format has been agreed to by representatives of both the Republican and Democratic campaigns. And there is no subject matter that is restricted -- anything goes, we can ask anything.

After the debate, the candidates will have an opportunity to make a closing statement. So, President Bush, I think you said it earlier, let's get it on.

BUSH: Let's go.

Q: And I think the first question is over here.

Q: Yes, I'd like to direct my question to Mr. Perot. What will you do as President to open foreign markets to fair competition from American business, and to stop unfair competition here at home from foreign countries so that we can bring jobs back to the United States.

PEROT: That's right at the top of my agenda. We've shipped millions of jobs overseas and we have a strange situation because we have a process in Washington where after you've served for a while you cash in and become a foreign lobbyist, make $30,000 a month; then take a leave, work on Presidential campaigns, make sure you got good contacts, and then go back out. Now if you just want to get down to brass tacks, the first thing you ought to do is get all these folks who've got these one-way trade agreements that we've negotiated over the years and say, "Fellows, we'll take the same deal we gave you." And they'll gridlock right at that point because, for example, we've got international competitors who simply could not unload their cars off the ships if they had to comply -- you see, if it was a two-way street -- just couldn't do it. We have got to stop sending jobs overseas.

To those of you in the audience who are business people, pretty simple: If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, hire young -- let's assume you've been in business for a long time and you've got a mature work force -- pay a dollar an hour for your labor, have no health care -- that's the most expensive single element in making a car -- have no environmental controls, no pollution controls and no retirement, and you don't care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south.

So we -- if the people send me to Washington the first thing I'll do is study that 2,000-page agreement and make sure it's a two-way street. One last part here -- I decided i was dumb and didn't understand it so I called the Who's Who of the folks who've been around it and I said, "Why won't everybody go South?" They say, "It'd be disruptive." I said, "For how long?" I finally got them up from 12 to 15 years. And I said, "well, how does it stop being disruptive?" And that is when their jobs come up from a dollar an hour to six dollars an hour, and ours go down to six dollars an hour, and then it's leveled again. But in the meantime, you've wrecked the country with these kinds of deals. We've got to cut it out.

Q: Thank you Mr. Perot. I see that the President has stood up so he must have something to say about this.

BUSH: Well, Carole, the thing that saved us in this global economic slowdown is in our exports. And what I'm trying to do is increase our exports. And if, indeed, all the jobs were going to move South because of lower wages, there are lower wages now and they haven't done that. And so I have just negotiated with the President of Mexico; the North American Free Trade Agreement; and the Prime Minister of Canada, I might add, and I'm -- I want to have more of these free trade agreements. Because export jobs are increasing far faster than any jobs that may have moved overseas; that's a scare tactic because it's not that many. But anyone that's here, we want to have more jobs here and the way to do that is to increase our exports.

Some believe in protection. I don't. I believe in free and fair trade and that's the thing that saved us, and so I will keep on as President trying to get a successful conclusion to the GATT round, the big Uruguay round of trade which will really open up markets for our -- for our agriculture particularly -- I want to continue work after we get this Nafta agreement ratified this coming year; I want to get one with Eastern Europe. I want to get one with Chile and free and fair trade is the answer, now protection. And as I say we've had tough economic times and it's exports that have saved us. Exports that have built.